"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

Could anyone fail to be disgruntled, disappointed, disillusioned, dismayed by the dismal, disingenuous disaster that is Michael Martin ? I watched with incredulity this inadequate man's sad statement yesterday. No apology. No acknowledgment of his own duty or his failure to perform it. In true New Labour style he tried to pass the buck to others, the Sergeant-at-Arms or the police. Note his use of the passive - "I was not told that the police did not have a warrant" and "I was not asked the question of whether consent should be given or whether a warrant should have been insisted on...". The passive voice is always favoured by people trying to escape their own responsibility. Is there a bank-robber, a fan of any television detective programme, indeed any citizen who does not know that the police need a warrant to search ? Why did it not occur to the Speaker (£76,904 p.a. on top of an MP's salary) or the Sergeant-at-Arms (salary unknown) to ask to see a warrant ? Can it be, as Dominic Grieve and Chris Huhne suggested on Newsnight that Parliament has now become the creature of the executive and can no longer defend itself ? Yet most MPs are still mealy-mouthed about the Speaker. Time now to stand up. MPs must remember the words of Oliver Cromwell and tell Michael Martin it's time to go.

Education, education, education

I was interested to hear someone introduced on the radio as Professor of the Sociology of Sport at the University of Chichester. How heart-warming to know that the government's plans to have half the population graduate are making such progress. How delightful that the noble pursuit of knowledge is even today developing ever newer disciplines. It is in this spirit that I announce the latest advance in higher education in Somerset, the founding of the University of Chard. I have been most fortunate in obtaining the services of Professor Whitehead for the Michael O'Leary Chair of Aviation Chronology. His longstanding colleague Merlin the spaniel will become Reader in Canine Semiotics, whilst I myself will be inaugurating the new Department of Liberal Isocracy (look it up) and European Meta-Neo-Crypto-Personalism. Applications for new posts will be especially welcomed if accompanied by sponsorship endowments. In particular we still lack names for the back garden and the shed.

Gordon Brown Nose

Why am I still surprised, disgruntled and revolted by Gordon Brown ? Could it be his choice of dinner guests - George Bush and Rupert Murdoch ? No, bad as that is, it's that ghastly smile with which he declared Bush "a true friend of Britain". And people are afraid that the European Union is running Britain !!!!! Open your eyes, Europhobes.

Disgruntled again - very

Someone asked me if I had really not been at all disgruntled in the last six months, when I have written no new posts. Well, yes I was - with Windows Vista, the Halifax, the standard of driving in Chard and all those common disgruntlements of life, but none deserving of your precious attention until now.

I have just watched the lamentable scene of the House of Commons extending detention without charge to 42 days. Some will say that Gordon Brown has reasserted his authority over his party, but the truth is that this appalling decision has been reached not by argument but by irrelevant bribes and threats and the assistance of those famous guardians of liberty (as long as you are a Protestant bigot) the Democratic Unionists. So, like the Bourbons our government has learned nothing from history. Worse still, like the Jacobins and their infamous Committee of Public Safety the government has incorporated a parliamentary process into the judicial business of deciding on an individual's detention.

Can there be anyone left who believes that the Labour government can be trusted to defend liberty in Britain ?